D&D 4E D&D 4E Post-Mortem

[MichaelSomething]

The last time I ran 4E, it was great! Then again, when your table group is drawn from Enworld, where the greatest TTRPGers on the planet assemble, that's par for the course.

 

[Voadam]

The other player who brought the most backstory basically used a plot oracle to come up with "getting involved in a theft involving Cubans."
So I decided to do a play on words and had the cube'ns be Modrons, and her character was involved in the theft of the Book of Law that they were trying to recover.

Very nice.

 

[Mannahnin]

I could understand doing that. And perhaps if I hadn't given them another option besides "write it all down," it would've worked.
On the few occasions I didn't print out a character sheet immediately and had them work off notes, their lack of understanding how the game operated guaranteed we would get incomplete information.

Player: "Ok, I got a 23 to hit!"
DM: "Alright, against which defense?"
Player: "Uh ... their defense score?"
DM: "AC, Fortitude, Reflex, or Will?"
Player: "I uh ... got a 23 to hit?"

Player: "I hit and get to move them 3 spaces."
DM: "Alright, how do you move them?"
Player: "Because I hit them with my axe."
DM: "No. Do you slide, push, pull, teleport, etc.?"
Player: "But I ... hit them with my axe?"

Yeah, you had a table full of our one guy (or worse than our one guy). We got frustrated with that one guy, but everyone else had decent to very good system mastery, so everyone else was able to help him out and it wasn't all on the DM.

I have a pretty large mini collection as well. (Painting miniatures is a secondary hobby of mine.)
The problem is distinguishing the miniatures in significant ways.
For example, in a given fight I might have 8 different orcs.
4 Orc Warrior minions (brutes)
2 Orcs with Cream Pies (artillery)
2 Orc Battle Yodelers (controllers)
Do you use matching models to represent the Cream Pie Orcs, or unique ones? If you use matching models, how do you distinguish which ones are bloodied, taking ongoing acid damage, etc.? If you use different models, how do you indicate which are Cream Pie and not Battle Yodelers?
In other editions of the game, you wouldn't really have as many different varieties of orcs in a single combat. Or need to track as many conditions. Or they'd usually die after a few hits and you wouldn't have to track them for an hour long combat.

Distinguishing between same types for purposes of conditions and such definitely is important. IME each group came up with standard conventions.

One group might use colored plastic rings on the minis to denote conditions, another numbered the bases of the minis. Sometimes we used color-coded magnetic indicators which we stuck on our magnetic initiative whiteboard (which one player was in charge of keeping updated, but everyone used for reference). I also bought little plastic condition markers which licensed or unofficial third parties made, which you could just put on the mat next to the mini saying "stunned", "shaken", or what have you.

Minions, of course, reduced the load compared to low-HD monsters in 3.x, which might take two or three hits and needed to have their HP individually tracked.

 

[Voadam]

So on re-reading the OP a couple things stand out.

What Next?
Well, I’m taking a break.
After that, I have three remaining players: my wife, the story and roleplaying coworker, and my adult neighbor. They claim to want to try another game with just us. Maybe a rules-lite one-shot to see how to goes. I do want a chance at redemption after this 4E game.

With a large group (particularly of people not into actually knowing the system) generally you want a simpler quicker system to reduce cognitive load on the DM and to keep things running quick so that people get less time waiting around for their turn. With a small group like 3 instead of 6 it is easier to run more complex stuff.

I had one player (my neighbor’s coworker) who really wanted story and roleplaying, but the other players would regularly be awful in the stereotypical ways.
Wanting to have sex with every female NPC encountered.
Threaten to kill any civilian who dared to get in their way.
Encourage PvP fights.
Send texts to each other during the game, pass notes, and ask me to step out of the room so they could take actions without the DM listening in. (I guess it didn’t matter to them that they needed me to actually adjudicate what they were doing.)

Even if it is just your wife, the adult neighbor, and the coworker, if your wife and the neighbor want to roleplay awful people and you don't want to DM that it is going to be an issue in whatever system you run.

Sometimes saying up front you want to run a game for white hats/heroes/good guys can set the tone from the beginning and get everybody on board to prevent the group of jerks party dynamic.

Sometimes the group jerk dynamic can be a campaign specific thing that can change in different campaigns ("We played heroes last time, let's do an evil campaign this time.") Here's hoping you can get a different dynamic that works for you as well next time.

 

[Retreater]

Yeah, you had a table full of our one guy (or worse than our one guy). We got frustrated with that one guy, but everyone else had decent to very good system mastery, so everyone else was able to help him out and it wasn't all on the DM.

I promise that I tried to teach them. But I think part of the issue was that I started running the game with the purpose of a short arc (specifically a season of Encounters for levels 1-3). I didn't intend it to end up being the longest campaign I've run for this group.

Distinguishing between same types for purposes of conditions and such definitely is important. IME each group came up with standard conventions.

Thanks for all the good tips. Investing in some kind of numbering system or indicators might be helpful in the future.
The other factor is we have a big gaming table, which is good for a big group. But it also means some players are far away from the action. Bags of Doritos block vision. They can't reach their minis for specific tactical movement.
Just overall, it created extra problems.

 

[Retreater]

With a large group (particularly of people not into actually knowing the system) generally you want a simpler quicker system to reduce cognitive load on the DM and to keep things running quick so that people get less time waiting around for their turn. With a small group like 3 instead of 6 it is easier to run more complex stuff.

Yeah. Ironically, I'm probably in a better position to run a more complex game with the group I have remaining. However, I'm personally drained mentally from the previous experience. So it's going to hopefully be a lighter system with maybe a more complex story.

 

[Zardnaar]

Thought about a one off just using the main three books as one of the players was vaguely interested.

Without the builder would probably just use a few books eg arcane/martial power etc to keep it simple.

Had 5 combats in two hours last night in C&C just saying.

 

[Retreater]

Had 5 combats in two hours last night in C&C just saying

I have a story with C&C.
I went in with it the year it was first released. I was running 3.5 then, and I begged the group (a different group than today) to switch over. They had no interest in playing something simpler and more streamlined.
So eventually I sold my books and moved on to other games, including 4E.
Today, everyone in that group is playing separate OSR games across the country. One of them is successfully running C&C, buying every supplement TLG puts out.

 

[Zardnaar]

I have a story with C&C.
I went in with it the year it was first released. I was running 3.5 then, and I begged the group (a different group than today) to switch over. They had no interest in playing something simpler and more streamlined.
So eventually I sold my books and moved on to other games, including 4E.
Today, everyone in that group is playing separate OSR games across the country. One of them is successfully running C&C, buying every supplement TLG puts out.

Lol. C&C and B/X clones with ascending AC are about as easy to run as D&D gets.

In 2005 I was also running 3.5.

 

[vagabundo]

This reminds me of when City of the Spider Queen broke me as a DM and I swore off 3.x DND for a long time.